Saudi Aramco remains world's most profitable company even as oil falls

Aramco plans to buy a stake in the refining and chemicals business of Reliance Industries Ltd as it seeks buyers for its crude and diversification downstream

Saudi Aramco showed Monday it's still the world's most profitable company -- and paid out almost all its net income in dividends -- despite the dwindling price of oil.

Profit slid 12% to $46.9 billion in the first six months of 2019, the state-owned energy giant said in its first-ever half-year earnings report. That easily outstripped corporate titans such as Apple Inc, Amazon.com Inc and other big oil producers, many of which suffered larger declines in profit as output and crude prices fell.

"We have some of the largest and most productive reservoirs on Earth," Khalid Al-Dabbagh, senior vice president for finance,